


Werewolf Gimmick

by lately (aeggyu)



Category: INFINITE (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Angst, Bittersweet, Eventual Smut, Exes, Getting Back Together, Handcuffs, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Oral Sex, Pining, Self-Harm, Transformation, but for research purposes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:42:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24601027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeggyu/pseuds/lately
Summary: This is a story about a werewolf, but it's also a story about a break-up.
Relationships: Kim Sunggyu/Nam Woohyun
Comments: 31
Kudos: 54





	1. And I'm hungry like the wolf

**Author's Note:**

> Happy ten years, infinite.
> 
> Here is something no one asked but me, therefore completely self-indulgent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title and lyrics used are from the song by Duran Duran, which is also not about werewolves. Huh.

Like most things that go awfully wrong, things don’t go awfully wrong from one moment to the next.

It all starts with the quiet pitter-patter of the rain, a background hum at Woohyun’s apartment while he reads over a script for a radio show. His cats gather near the window to paw at the droplets of water hitting the glass, entranced by the soft hits that start increasing their intensity after a moment.

Leaning on the counter that separates the kitchen and the living room, Woohyun looks up from his documents and fishes his phone from his back pocket to record the cats' cute antics.

That’s when things start getting weird.

One of the cats grows bored by the movement and moves on to lie on top of a destroyed cardboard box, one of their favorite toys, but the other one crouches—her ears pulled back—and hisses at something outside the window. 

Woohyun frowns, putting his phone away, and approaches her to try to find the source of the cat's anxiety, but she darts out before he gets halfway through the living room. She hides under the couch, still hissing, and Woohyun leans down to look at her.

“What’s wrong?” he mumbles, trying to pull him out of the couch against his better judgment. The cat paws at him, claws out, fur bristling.

Next to them, the window nearly vibrates by the rain hitting it. Fat droplets of water are soon replaced by a hailstorm, its stones almost the size of a coin.

“At this time of the year?” Woohyun wonders aloud.

Then, the lock on the window’s side pops open due to the vibrations of the glass, and the window bursts open, flooding the room with hailstones and rain.

Woohyun curses, standing up to close the window again, but at that moment the cat runs straight into the storm and out of the house. Woohyun tries to catch her, of course, but she slips through his fingers and darts down the emergency stairs and into the night. 

“Hey, hey! Come back!” He yells, but it’s useless. He turns to look at the other cat, who takes a break from licking his back paws to look at him as if to say ‘who knows?’ and immediately gets back to his task.

Woohyun glances back to the window and runs off for the front door, not bothering to change from his indoor slippers, and bumps into his manager as the older man is unlocking the door.

“One of the cats—” He tries to explain, pushing his way out. “Take care of the other, I left—The window—Please close it!”

And with that he rushes out of the apartment and into the elevator, leaving the confused man standing there.

He thinks he should’ve considered things a bit better as he makes his way out of the apartment complex, yelling the name of his cat as the storm falls and the hailstones hit him, well, pretty much everywhere, like rubber bullets.

“Kwangie!” He screams, glancing around at possible hiding spots on the street. He catches the movement of some frankly overgrown bushes near the light post where sometimes people leave their trash bags and sighs, approaching it. “There you are! Seriously, what’s wrong with you!” Kwangie moves under the bushes, as in response. “Come here, it’s daddy!” He crouches again, using one hand to shield himself from the constant hits, and reaches under the bushes for his cat.

At the same time, however, he detects (rather poorly, due to the storm) some movement from the corner of his eye and when he looks to his side, who would have thought, Kwangie is standing a couple of meters away from him, hissing, tail lifted high, and body curled into an inverted U.

By the time he realizes whatever is under the bushes is not his cat, it’s too late.

Woohyun tries to take his hand back, but something bites him on the side, hard, and rips a bit of skin as Woohyun tugs away from it. Pain immediately flares from the affected area through his body, as if needles had just entered his bloodstream, and he squeaks in horror.

\---

“So... You don’t know what bit you?”

The doctor looks at Woohyun and goes back to write something on her writing pad when the man shakes his head. His hand is newly bandaged, and quite a dose of painkillers is already in his system. Behind her, his manager paces from one side of the room to the other, talking frantically on the phone to negotiate a re-schedule. They might still make it for the radio show tomorrow. 

She sighs. “If you said it was near some trash bags it could’ve been a rat, although the bite looks a bit big for that. A dog, maybe?” she wonders. Woohyun thinks back of the… thing… darting out of the bushes and into the night, its red eyes looking back at him, and immediately discards the idea. But he doesn’t say. “At any rate, you are at risk of exposure, so I recommend the rabies vaccination.” She reads over his clinic history and looks back at him. “No allergies to any medication, right? In that case, I'm going to give you the first dose. You'll have to come back for three more.”

“Does he need to check-in for a couple of days?” His manager asks, covering the phone’s speaker. The doctor shakes her head and he goes back to talking on the phone. Woohyun suspects he’s on his third call of the night.

“You just need to come back for the next four days and be on the lookout for any of the side effects. If it gets too bad you can come back sooner and we’ll see, ok? I’ll get the medicine and be right back.”

Woohyun nods. While she’s out, he grabs his phone with his good hand—the right one, luckily—and snaps a photo of his bandaged arm. He texts it to the Infinite group chat, where all the members reply with reactions that go from amusement to concern.

All except one, of course.

Woohyun puts his phone away after replying and checking that everyone read his message, pretending it’s not petty to be annoyed at being left on ‘seen’. Right after that, the doctor comes back with a syringe and glass bottle with the medication.

“By the way, how’s your shoulder?” She asks casually as she prepares the vaccination.

Woohyun moves his shoulders on circles in response, facing no resistance. “It bothers me every time it's going to rain,” he says, “but I think it’s not too bad right now. Most of the time, it’s just phantom pain, you know? I’m used to it.”

Now it doesn’t hurt at all, he doesn’t say.

She shrugs. “Might be due to the shock, but don’t worry. The bite looked nasty, but it wasn’t too deep and you didn't even need stitches. We’ll keep monitoring in case you feel unwell.”

Woohyun nods, and there’s that.

\--

Almost a month later, after the dose is done and his study results come back with nothing worrisome in particular except maybe that his levels of iron are a bit low and he needs to eat more, Woohyun sets to the task of doing groceries at a 24hr supermarket. 

It’s not like he meant to get there so late at night, but the group has been preparing for a fanmeeting and even if it’s not the eighteen hours they used to spend in the practice room, it has taken most of his time nowadays. Aside from that, there are certain benefits to shopping at midnight, such as not many people being around—even if he’s not as famous anymore. Plus, he’s always been kind of a night owl anyway.

He passes through the aisle of pet's stuff and thinks of his cats as he picks up a couple of bags of cat litter. Even if Kwangie has come back, she started behaving strangely towards him since that night. The other one doesn’t have much of an issue; he’s fairly independent and approaches for cuddles on some occasions, but Kwangie is always wary of him, always tense and even a little bit aggressive.

Woohyun wonders about them as he rubs on his injured hand, which by now only has scarred and only shows a tender, pink patch of new skin the size of his thumb. It has healed incredibly well to the surprise of everyone including his doctor, and soon he’ll be able to chalk it up to rough playing with his cats for the curious fans who ask. 

He was told it would itch while it healed, so Woohyun thinks it’s a side effect as he pushes his cart to the next aisle, mumbling to the lyrics of an 80s pop song playing on the distance, distorted by the speakers of the supermarket. However, he doesn’t get very far until his hand cramps, stinging as if he just burnt himself with the stove. He presses his other thumb gently against the scar, trying to rub on the skin just like he did a minute ago, and a jolt of pain bursts from the area and travels from his hand to his chest, where it stays, burning.

Woohyun gasps, looking around. The market is fairly empty, and yet a sensation of claustrophobia starts crawling up his spine quickly, dizzyingly. The music still plays in the background, but louder this time. Still distorted. Woohyun gasps, his mouth like cotton, his tongue weighing ten times heavier. 

(...on the hunt, I'm after you….)

He looks down at his hands, at the epicenter of his pain, and finds his fingers crooked, bent into unnatural shapes. His nails have claws. He tries to scream, but all that comes out is a wheeze.

(...is alive with juices….)

He blinks and his hands are back to normal, but under his cotton face mask his mouth feels unnaturally large, the bands of his mask straining, and when he touches his face he feels his fabric wet, saliva running down his neck. Everything smells too strong.

(....And I'm hungry like the….)

There’s meat somewhere, he realizes with a watering mouth, and attempts to take a step forward. He stumbles, clutching the supermarket cart with his hands, and they’re claws again, and they’re digging into the skin of his palms and drawing blood and the blood is dripping into the white floor, but the blood doesn’t look as red. Every color is duller, somehow. 

He recalls an article that Sungjong sent him about rabies where it mentioned hallucinations and delirium. It must be what’s happening to him right now. There is no other explanation. He wheezes again, finding it difficult to make more than guttural sounds. 

I am going crazy, he thinks. I have rabies and I’m going crazy.

As he pushes his cart aside, abandoning it, and skids towards the exit, he fails to notice that the wheels of the car smudge the droplets of blood on the floor. 

He tries to grab his phone from his jeans pocket, but he can’t pull it out due to the nails (so is he imagining them or not?). Luckily, the car keys on his jacket are easier to reach, and he nearly runs to the privacy of his car upon finding them. The 80s synth beats are still ringing on his ears, an insistent thump of the drum machine, but the rest of the noises of the city are overwhelming. He struggles to open the door and insert the keys on the right place, tasting bile on his lips and hands shaking, but when he shuts said door closed and finally manages to turn the car on, things feel marginally more in order.

Woohyun tries his best at driving, he really does, but even getting out of the parking lot proves to be a challenge to his uncoordinated arms and sluggish feet. He feels the car swerving a couple of times and decides to call it quits, less the police take notice and think he’s been drinking. He thinks of checking himself at a hospital but thinks of the scandal. Thinks of calling his manager, but he can’t get the fucking phone out of his pocket. Thinks of throwing himself off a bridge but he recognizes the neighborhood and settles on the dumbest course of action.

Parking the car haphazardly across the yellow lines, Woohyun drags himself out and stumbles into Sunggyu’s apartment building. He shoves his hands into his pockets, and nods at the security guard, hoping the guy still remembers him from the times he used to visit Sunggyu and asks no questions. The man raises an eyebrow at the car but says nothing as he lets Woohyun through, and Woohyun is glad he didn’t take off his face mask, wondering if the feeling of having too many teeth inside his mouth is also a hallucination.

He gets into the elevator and stares at his reflection in the metallic walls as he punches in the number to Sunggyu’s floor. In the distorted gloss, nothing seems out of the ordinary. But then, he blinks and suddenly the shape in front of him is taller, broader shoulders hunching forward and hands—claws—extending into twisted shapes. 

The elevator shudders and stops, and as the doors open Woohyun is shaken out of his hallucinations. He stumbles across the hall, hearing his breathing reverberate on his ears, and pounds on what—he hopes still is—Sunggyu’s door. 

He tries the bell a couple of times too, even thinks of trying the passwords to check if the other man hasn’t changed, but pressing the buttons is hard and he gives up after the first try, choosing instead to lean on the door and huff, exhausted. 

Before Woohyun is about to pound on the door again, it opens, revealing a confused Sunggyu whose expression immediately changes to one of disdain.

“What are you doing here?” he doesn’t ask but rather demands. Woohyun tries to explain everything in detail, but all that comes out of his mouth are incoherent sounds. “Are you drunk? I told you to stop coming here when you’re drunk.”

Woohyun shouts a ‘no’, the closest he’s gotten to human language, so that’s encouraging. 

“‘M sick,” he tries, tongue heavy on his mouth, trying to step into the apartment. 

Sunggyu puts his hands on Woohyun’s chest, pushing him out, and Woohyun’s heart breaks a little. 

(...the hunt, I'm after you….)

“If you’re sick go to a hospital. Did you overdose on something? Don’t come to my house with that shit,” Sunggyu spits out, about to close the door, but Woohyun falls into him and they stumble into the apartment. “Woohyun, seriously, I have people over.”

“At the—supermarket,” he whispers, and his voice doesn’t feel like his own. “Can't go. Hospital. Scandal.”

“Where’s your manager?”

“Can’t call,” he replies, the impostor’s voice still replacing him. “Think it’s rabies.”

“What, why? What do you mean...” Sunggyu asks, but his voice fades until Sunggyu pushes him against the wall and slaps his cheek twice. “Where’s your phone.”

“Can’t call,” Woohyun says, showing Sunggyu what he seriously hopes are hands full of claws and not a hallucination. “Can’t reach… phone.”

By the almost comical widening of Sunggyu’s eyes, he thinks they are very much claws.

“Woohyun what the fuck,” he whispers harshly, glancing at the inside of his apartment, hoping the friends who were drinking with him can’t see them. “If this is your idea of a joke…”

“Sunggyu,” he says, still with that strange, throaty voice, “I’m gonna die?”

“Seriously stop joking,” Sunggyu says, trying to hold him in place, but his hands are not enough. “Didn’t you take your shots?”

“I thought—” Woohyun starts, but after struggling against Sunggyu’s hold a scent rushes through his body and shocks him into staying still. It’s Sunggyu. It smells like Sunggyu and it smells like home.

Woohyun’s mind wanders back to the supermarket, to the faint hum of 80s synths and the smell of the meat aisle. And he looks at Sunggyu.

Sunggyu notices him staring and frowns. He places a hand over his forehead, the scent strengthening, and Woohyun shudders. His hands twitch. Ache for something to break. He whimpers.

“You’re burning up. We have to go to the hospital.”

Woohyun shakes his head, drunk on the scent coming from Sunggyu. His body is torn between soothed and turned on.

Maybe he does need to go to the hospital.

“What if—What if they know,” he chokes out. 

Sunggyu’s hand drops from his forehead, but before Woohyun can protest, he sets it on top of Woohyun’s bad shoulder. The touch is enough to calm his shivering.

“I think you going to the emergency room would hardly make it to the main page on Naver these days,” Sunggyu mumbles, his touch turning into a light shove. 

It’s meant to be teasing, Woohyun knows. After all, Sunggyu’s nervous laugh follows shortly after, patting him in the same place. He _knows_ because he’s known Sunggyu for a good one-third of his life, even if they had the most disastrous relationship in all of their dating history (mutually and otherwise). He knows, because Sunggyu must be at least a little worried, must still care about him at least a little. He _has_ to be.

He knows all that, so why does he growl at Sunggyu?

Sunggyu flinches back before either of them realizes what just happened, and Woohyun whimpers when his hand retracts. 

“Okay, mixed signals all over the place,” Sunggyu says, stepping back. Still resting his shoulder blades against the wall, Woohyun hides his hands behind his back to stop himself from trying to pull Sunggyu towards him again. “Seriously, did you overdose on something?”

“I already told you!” Woohyun half-shouts, half-growls. His mouth still feels like it’s trying to fit too many teeth and cannot close properly. He huffs in exasperation and rips off the face mask, which turns out to be a mistake because all the interesting scents in Sunggyu’s house assault him at the same time. 

Sunggyu gasps. 

“I don't think that's rabies,” he says, an edge of panic in his voice. Despite his obvious hesitation ( _is he scared of me?_ ) he steps forward again and forces the mask back on Woohyun. “Put your hands back into your pockets.”

When Woohyun does, Sunggyu pulls him towards himself and into the house. “Lower your head,” he whispers against Woohyun’s ear, guiding him through his living room, where a chorus of hooting receives them. 

“It’s the ex!” Someone shouts, and Woohyun feels the urge to growl again, but he focuses on Sunggyu’s quiet _keep going,_ words that go straight into his chest and fuel the already overwhelmed pumping of his heart.

“Started the party without us, did he?” Woohyun hears someone else say, but by this point, they’re already reaching Sunggyu’s room. Still half-dragging him, Sunggyu manages to close the door behind them.

“Stay here,” he says, dropping him onto the bed. Woohyun feels wrong, unprotected lying on his back, so he curls into a ball. His feet have started hurting as if his shoes were too small, and his clothes feel tight. He rips the mask off again, and although the scent is stronger in the room, it’s better than almost suffocating under the wet fabric. “Let me kick them out and I’ll call your manager after that. We’ll fix this, ok?”

We’ll fix this, he said right before fucking up their relationship. Woohyun growls again, pushing the hand patting his head and turning on his side. He hears a sigh, and the weight on the bed disappears. 

He falls unconscious after that.

\---

At some point, Woohyun hears the quiet thrumming of a pair of voices, but he’s too tired to open his eyes. His body hurts, especially his left hand, and there’s an aching heat on his chest that grows deeper with each inhale against the pillow under him. He wants to cry.

“You were right. This is not rabies,” one of the voices whispers. 

“That’s what I said! I thought it was a joke, but look at his face,” another voice replies. Woohyun whines, trying to pull himself back to consciousness, but it’s as if he were dragging his feet through quicksand.

“And he’s covered in hair. Why is he naked anyway?”

“I don’t know. He wasn’t like that when I left him here.” Sunggyu, it’s Sunggyu! Woohyun wants to scream at him, but his vocal cords are not working. Nothing in his body is working. He cries harder.

A sigh. 

“We can’t take him to the hospital like this.”

“But hyung, we have to.”

“Let me call my mom. I think she might know of someone who can help us.”

“Help us how?” Sunggyu says, raising his voice with each word. "Hyung? Help us how?"

Woohyun goes back into oblivion.


	2. you're a drifter, shapeshifter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> woohyun makes a discovery about himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from 'wolf' by first aid kit
> 
> hmm. this ended up being a bit more... angsty? I'll update the tags accordingly. Sorry I didn't do it from the beginning.

The next morning Woohyun wakes up to the sound of a door closing. The strange thing is that even though the soft ‘thud’ of the door bumping softly into the frame would be unnoticeable for him before, his body reacts before he's fully again and he sits up, startled.

“Ah!” Sunggyu says in front of the bed, showing Woohyun his palms, “you surprised me.”

Woohyun lies back down, closing his eyes again. “I don’t know why I did that.”

He means to ask why he’s there, in Sunggyu’s room and Sunggyu’s bed, tucked into Sunggyu’s sheets and completely naked. Naked. Hm. He looks at Sunggyu, but then remembers that it’s been a good couple of years since they were together, so his nakedness doesn't make much sense.

Little by little, he recalls the night before and wishes it was all just a bad dream. He looks at Sunggyu, and back at his own nakedness; no body hair (aside from the usual) in sight. His nails are back to their normal length. And on his hand, the bite scar is colored an inconspicuous white.

"What happened?" he asks Sunggyu, who flutters around the room nervously, pretending he's tidying up. 

Sunggyu stops folding a shirt to look back at him with widened eyes. "You don't remember?"

Woohyun shrugs, looking down to avoid Sunggyu's scrutiny. "I mean, what I remember can't be..."

"You turned into a half-man half-beast... um, being."

Woohyun looks at him.

Sunggyu stares back.

Woohyun sighs.

"Look, I'm sorry if I turned up to your house in a poor condition. It wasn't the best idea, I admit. But if we did something we would both regret, I feel like I should know," he says, glancing around for his clothes. He does not want to leave the security of the blankets.

Sunggyu scoffs, "You're always finding ways to outdo yourself." He picks up Woohyun’s clothes—or at least, what used to be his shirt and sweatpants, and now have become mere rags—and throws them at Woohyun’s face. 

Woohyun stares at them, and back at Sunggyu. He recalls how he used to think he knew what Sunggyu liked. Together, when they were good, they were great. 

And when they were bad...

“So I turned into a werewolf,” he concedes, fingers clutching the torn clothes. “But why am I here?”

“That’s what I’m wondering too,” Sunggyu says, throwing him more things; old leisure clothing Woohyun recalls peeling off from Sunggyu’s body after late-night rehearsals. When they were great. “If you’re not passing out again anytime soon get out of here.”

Woohyun huffs. There it is.

He starts shrugging on the ratty cotton shirt until his body tenses. He looks at the door, unblinking, unable to force himself away from the shuffling sounds he hears outside. “Who’s there?” comes out of his mouth instinctively.

Sunggyu frowns. “What do you—”

Then, Woohyun lifts a hand. Strangely enough (because in other times, even when they were together, that never worked) it seems to be enough for Sunggyu to shut up.

Woohyun remains tense until he realizes he’s just hearing the ‘click’ of the main door opening.

“Sunggyu-shi!”

“Ah, it’s just manager Wongie,” Sunggyu says.

Woohyun finishes putting Sunggyu’s clothes on, a chill on his nape still present. Somehow, even before Sunggyu spoke and before the voice came out from the living room, Woohyun already knew it was his manager. And the weirdest thing is,

“Someone is with him,” he says, turning to Sunggyu, who crosses his arms and looks at him with eyes that even when they were great, Woohyun couldn’t decipher.

But the look soon is gone, replaced by the trademarked Pouty Look that used to drive him mad in more ways than one. Maybe it still does, but Woohyun deems this not the best of times to think about that. 

“I told him not to bring her here,” he says, opening the door. Woohyun, without much else to do, follows. 

When they both arrive at the living room, they find manager Wongie offering something to drink to a woman sitting at the couch where not too long ago (or at least Woohyun thinks?) Sunggyu’s friends were sprawled on, drinking and playing games. 

She looks to be in her mid to late fifties, sporting an impeccably permed hair and two-piece pink skirt suit. A black faux-leather bag sits on her lap, and Woohyun wonders how he knows it’s not real leather from more than a couple steps away. Not too long after, his brain supplies the reason: He can smell it.

“Oh, I didn’t know you were awake,” Manager Wongie says, his gaze dancing between them. “I would like to introduce you to Ms. Oh.”

\--

Ms. Oh sits Woohyun down with her and pulls out a small notepad and a calendar attached to a poster from a butcher shop as Sunggyu sulks in a corner, secretly threatening to throw them all out of his house (Woohyun can hear his muttering).

“So, how long ago you said you were bitten?” she asks, passing the calendar to him. “Please, be as precise as you can.”

Woohyun takes the calendar on his hands and tries to recall the exact date. Was it on a Saturday or a Sunday? What was he wearing? If the radio show got postponed for four days, and it aired on the 28th… Or was it postponed for five days? Three? He was taking quite some painkillers then. 

“It was February 23rd,” Sunggyu supplies from his Sulking Corner, one arm crossed over his chest, looking at his phone. “It’s here, on the group chat.”

Woohyun recalls he was the only one who didn’t send him a message that night.

Ms. Oh nods, takes the calendar back from him, and circles the date. Woohyun notices the drawing of a full moon on the corner as she starts moving her fingers around the weeks that follow, counting to herself.

“And you hadn’t noticed anything special until yesterday evening? Any enhanced abilities, a burst of strength?” 

Woohyun chews the inside of his bottom lip. His teeth are duller than yesterday, but they’re not back to their usual shape yet. He feels himself puncture his own skin, although not too deeply, and sighs, grabbing a tissue hiding between the empty bottles of liquor at the table in front of the couch. 

“Now that you mention it,” he says after he’s done dabbing on his self-inflicted wound, “I had an injury about 8 years ago, my shoulder was in pretty bad shape. I went to physical therapy for it and it got a bit better, but I was told I would never regain full mobility. But after that night, I think I haven’t felt it bother me. Not even with the cold."

Ms. Oh nods again, writing it down on her notepad. 

“And yesterday… Would you mind narrating everything that happened? Try to focus on everything that felt out of the ordinary.”

So Woohyun does, although he does not mention the insistent drum machine rhythm playing on the back of his mind, nor does he talk about the shame of coming to Sunggyu of all people, the fear he felt when he stared back at the distorted figure on the elevator. 

But perhaps he doesn’t have to; perhaps it’s all written on his expression, on the trembling of his shoulders as he crosses his arms around his chest.

Ms. Oh leaves her notepad on the table and pulls him to her. Woohyun doesn’t know that he’s in her arms until he’s smelling the sandalwood with a hint of lavender that reminds him of when he was a kid and his mother dragged him to the Buddhist temples before the new year.

She pulls away from him and sighs. “Since you were bitten, do you recall cutting yourself? Even if it was a papercut.” Woohyun tries to find a situation like that in his memories, but nothing comes to mind. She nods, grabbing his hand, and goes on. “I want to try something, but you might not like it. We need to check for something like enhanced healing.”

Woohyun nods. “How do we do that?”

Out of her bag, Ms. Oh pulls a switchblade and a western-looking coin. Woohyun widens his eyes, and he’s not looking at Sunggyu, but he can _feel_ the man’s eyebrows reach his hairline.

“One of these will hurt you,” she says, careful in front of his surprised look. “But not in the way you think.” She gives him the switchblade. “Just a small cut on one of your fingers will do. I’ll leave it up to you.”

“Ma’am, don’t you think that’s a bit…” Sunggyu says, approaching them, but before he’s done with his thought, Woohyun opens the switchblade and makes a clean cut across his left thumb. The knife cutting his skin stings, and Woohyun, feeling his eyes water as he hears Sunggyu’s exclamation of surprise, lets out a gasp.

“Oh honey, I said a small cut,” Ms. Oh blurts, grabbing another tissue from the table and pressing it against his thumb. “I didn’t want you slicing your thumb off. Maybe I need to get a duller knife.”

Woohyun stares at the white tissue slowly tainting red and thinks aloud, “It’s been a weird day.”

Ms. Oh uses the same tissue to clean her knife. “And it will get weirder.”

Woohyun wants to ask her what she means. At that same time, his thumb becomes rigid, as if he was stretching his skin by placing a clothespin on the cut to close it off. But there’s nothing. As he stares at it, the cut becomes smaller and smaller, until all that’s left is a small nub of pink skin.

“What,” Woohyun and Sunggyu mumble at the same time. He looks at his manager, who just stares with comically wide eyes, and at Ms. Oh, with a less impressed look. He then stares at the switchblade.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Ms. Oh says as she puts it away. “You’re welcome to try again on your own time and with your own tools.”

Which of course translates to Woohyun jumping to his feet and scrambling to Sunggyu’s kitchen, the owner of the said kitchen hot on his trails.

“Please tell me you’re not going to do what I think you’re going to do,” he says to Woohyun, who goes straight to the utensils drawer and pulls out a knife. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Several things, apparently,” Woohyun turns to him and aims the knife at a different finger. “Ready?”

“Why did you have to come to my house,” Sunggyu whines as Woohyun slices his middle finger. They both stare at the bloody gap with various shades of disgust until the cut closes again. But before any of them can process the situation fully. Woohyun goes in and slices his own palm as well. “What’s wrong with you!”

Woohyun says nothing, dropping the knife onto the floor. He grabs a rag hanging from the handle on the oven’s door and presses it against his bloody hand. The funny thing is, it hurts as much as any regular cut, the stinging on the exposed layers of internal tissue making his eyes water, but by the time he pulls the rag away, all that’s left is a line of bright pink skin that transverses his palm.

He looks at Sunggyu, at the pale skin and sunken eyes. He’s not gaping at Woohyun, but Woohyun knows that look.

“I don’t understand,” the man says, looking like his legs aren't going to hold him up for long. Woohyun wants to tell him he’s not the only one, but he doesn’t have the time to because Sunggyu is rushing through the kitchen, past him, and straight to the sink to throw up.

Woohyun keeps rubbing at his palm, feeling all cognitive abilities leave his body there, under the fluorescent kitchen lights.

Why did I have to come here? He thinks. Why to him, of all people.

“I’m sorry,” he ends up saying at some point like it matters. “If I’d known, I wouldn’t have come here.”

From his place hunched at the sink, Sunggyu stares at him with watery eyes as he rubs saliva off his chin with the back of his hand and opens the tap to flush down everything he just discarded. Woohyun scrunches his nose at the pungent smell.

“Well,” Sunggyu starts, visibly cringing at the taste in his mouth. He must read the conflict in Woohyun's eyes, and he could say anything in the world, but he chooses, “Now you are here, so let's just... deal with this."

He grabs the bloodied rag from Woohyun’s hands and throws it into the trash can, and proceeds to herd Woohyun back into the living room with a hand on Woohyun’s waist. He probably doesn’t even realize it; it comes as a natural, familiar movement after so many years. However, Woohyun can’t recall feeling it ever since their disastrous break-up.

His manager and Ms. Oh are chatting among themselves about their neighborhood's public lighting issues or something like that when Sunggyu and Woohyun step back into the living room.

“We can continue,” Woohyun says with a faraway voice, eyes trailing after Sunggyu, who is most likely going to the bathroom to rinse off his mouth. “I’m sorry for the outburst.”

“Don’t worry.” She shows him the coin she pulled out before. “This has been mixed with other metals, so it’s not pure silver. Are you aware of what silver is supposed to do?”

Woohyun nods. He's seen the movies.

“I’m very sorry,” Ms. Oh says, “I don't know if it'll work yet, but this may leave a mark, so please show me where you would prefer to have it.”

His manager supplies, “somewhere the fans won’t notice right away?”

Woohyun nods, mentally cataloging his body. By then, Sunggyu has already come back into the room, and is back on his Sulking Corner, arms crossed over his chest again. He wishes the older man would give his own opinion as well, and then thinks ‘what good would that do?’ It’s not like Sunggyu would look at his body anyway. He hasn’t, in years.

Looking back at Ms. Oh, he mumbles an apology, nervous laughter slipping from his lips as well, and lifts his shirt to show her his side, pointing at a spot between his ribs.

"Very well," she says, pressing the coin against his skin.

Woohyun has often burned himself while cooking—a careless brush of the back of his hand against the back of a heated wok, a touch of a pot with burning water, a droplet of hot oil jumping from the pan into his arm. The pain has always been immediate but soothed after a couple of minutes under the cold water. The touch of the coin against his skin, however, feels like those three things combined and doubled.

He hears the sound of a wounded animal in the distance and belatedly realizes it's coming from him. When he comes back to his senses, he sees Ms. Oh putting the coin away with a sorrowful expression on her face and his manager looking at him with his hand covering his mouth. And he finds himself curled into Sunggyu's embrace.

“Is it always going to be like this?” Woohyun asks, disentangling himself from Sunggyu’s arms, cheeks flushed. He doesn’t want to look at the other man, doesn’t want to give in to the overwhelming sadness.

Ms. Oh tries to keep her expression neutral. “I have never heard of a cure,” she says, and the weight on Woohyun’s chest increases. “But it’s not always going to be like this.” She grabs the discarded calendar. “Right now you’re here,”—she points at the date, but more specifically at the nearly full moon, only a slither of black around it—”the full moon is tomorrow, so you’ll be more sensitive until that is over. Are you familiar with how women….” 

‘I try not to,’ Woohyun wants to say, but can only nod.

“The analogy is not very accurate or factual, but well, with the timeframes.. it is a bit like that.”

“What’s going to happen on the full moon?” Next to him, Sunggyu asks what Woohyun has been thinking ever since he realized the full moon was out behind the clouds on the night he got bitten.

Ms. Oh sighs. "It varies from person to person, but with time I'm sure you will learn to control it," she says. "However, for the time being, I would recommend keeping him in a protected room. In fact..." She stands up, pulling out a couple of paper rectangles with strange writing on them. "Mr. Kim, would you mind opening that window behind you?"

Sunggyu nods, climbing up the sofa, and opens the window. 

"Good. Please close it again. Then, please stick this to the glass." She hands him one of the rectangles. When Sunggyu is done, she requests, “please open and close it again.” Sunggyu frowns, but does as told. Ms. Oh turns to Woohyun. “Now, you try it.”

Woohyun looks at Sunggyu, who just shrugs, and climbs up the couch to open the window too. However, once he’s close enough to touch the handle, a spark flies from the glass and into his fingers and Woohyun pulls back with a start. He tries again with the same result.

They both turn to look at Ms. Oh.

“The protection seals work, then," she comments, looking around the house and counting her pieces of paper. "How many windows are in here? Oh, and I should leave a couple for the door as well."

"Wait," Sunggyu says, climbing down. "He's not staying here."

"Oh, I thought—"

"Yes! It's okay, I'll put them up at my apartment," Woohyun says, extending his hand towards Ms. Oh, but once he realizes he can’t touch it, he deflates. At that same time, he realizes something. “Ah, but I live with my cats. Do I have to give them away?”

Ms. Oh pulls the papers toward her chest, apprehensive. "Most of the time it's not a problem. However, as the full moon approaches and you become a bit less in control of yourself at night, I don't think it's safe for them." And then, rather unnecessarily, she adds, "you could... eat them."

Woohyun lets out an incredulous laugh, slumping on the couch. "I can't stay with my parents either. What would I tell them?"

He gives his manager a pleading look, but all the other man says is, "I can't. We live in a small apartment and I don't think my wife would agree."

Ms. Oh pats him on the shoulder. "Young man," she says, but not to him, "are you sure he can't stay here? Aren't you his friend?"

Friend. Woohyun laughs again.

"That is..." Sunggyu starts. "What if he tries to eat me too?"

Woohyun scoffs, but says nothing, eyes downcast. As if he would hurt Sunggyu.

"It's just for three nights," Ms. Oh says. "On the last night, you can leave him to rest inside a room and protect the door and the windows."

"Lock him up, then," Sunggyu says. "Isn't that too harsh?"

"What do you want me to do then?" Woohyun shoots back, finally facing Sunggyu. "You don't want me here, I get that. But I don't have anywhere else to go."

Sunggyu stands up. "That's why I'm asking, why did you come here?"

"I'm sorry that I was in the neighborhood!" Woohyun replies, also standing. "I already told you I know coming here was a mistake."

"And I'm sorry I'm not prepared to deal with this as we all would like," Sunggyu hisses. "You're always pressuring me into things."

He mutters the last words, but they're loud enough for Woohyun's ears.

"Pressuring you?" Woohyun snarls. "Oh, so that's what this is about. What a hassle to ask you for a bit of understanding.”

"It's not like that! You can't expect me to adapt to this so quickly."

"But for some reason, it's always been like that when it's about me."

“That's not true and you know it.”

“I don't want you babysitting me anyway. You don't care.” Woohyun stands up, “where are my keys? I’ll go barricade myself in a room at a hotel somewhere for the next three days or so.”

“Woohyun, I didn't—”

His manager cuts his escape route by standing between Ms. Oh and the coffee table and places a hand on his chest to stop him. “Guys, I think that’s enough. You’ve given quite the show already.” Then, softly, “Woohyun, please sit down. You too, Sunggyu,” He remains unmoving until they both do as told. “The way I see it, this is the only option we have right now. Don't you have a spare room? He could stay there and you wouldn't have to interact at all." he stares at them. "Though maybe it would help if you interacted a little more. At least without yelling at each other."

Woohyun, still looking at the floor, feels Sunggyu sigh, imagines the rise and fall of his chest, and chews on his bottom lip again. Sunggyu slumps down on the couch but Woohyun refuses to look up. He feels like crying, but he’s not sure why.

"He can stay."

\---

Later on, after hours holed up in the guest room, Woohyun sighs and decides to ask what he’s been meaning to ever since his manager and Ms. Oh left.

“Can I borrow your charger?” 

From his place at the bed and with the TV on, Sunggyu looks up from his phone. He quickly turns his gaze away from Woohyun’s, however. “Oh, sure.”

Woohyun stands in the entrance of Sunggyu’s bedroom, which for some reason he hasn’t protected with the seals Ms. Oh left them. He figures Sunggyu will do it later that night; after all, he mentioned he didn’t feel safe. 

“So,” he starts, “where is it?”

Sunggyu glances around and finds it on the nightstand. He extends his hand towards Woohyun, this time holding his gaze for a little longer. Then, he pretends that the news program on TV is more interesting. Woohyun adventures into the room.

“Were you planning on going out?” he says as casually as he can, looking at the outfit laid out on a nearby chair. 

Sunggyu glances at it, too, and goes back to texting on his phone. He makes a sound that Woohyun interprets as a yes.

"I don't know, I haven't showered," Sunggyu says after some painful seconds of silence. "Plus, I feel bad for leaving you alone."

"As I said, you don't have to babysit me," he comments, daring to sit at the edge of the bed. He pretends to be interested in the news as well.

"Oh, don't start."

Woohyun feels his temper flaring, but he doesn't want another yelling match. "I mean it, I can take care of myself. Just seal the guest room and I'll be there inside."

"I don't want to do that," Sunggyu says, the sound of the bedsheets shuffling as Sunggyu moves around to sit up, "That's like locking you up. But I don't know what to do then. I never expected we would have to deal with this."

"I think we both said things we regretted today."

He doesn't want to say that all is forgiven, but he doesn't want to argue either. He hears the clicking of Sunggyu's phone unlocking, followed by a deep breath.

"I shouldn't have yelled at you,” Sunggyu says, proving, as always, to be the most mature and therefore the victor of this match. In front of Woohyun, the news anchor moves her mouth, but the words feel distant, foreign. “It’s just… yesterday was pretty scary. Didn’t you feel scared too?”

Woohyun nods. “I was terrified. Maybe I still am.”

"Even if things ended the way they did, I wouldn't want you to go through that alone." Woohyun feels Sunggyu shuffling around on the bed. "Don't sit in the corner, come here."

Turning back, Woohyun wants to tell him many things, but all words get stuck on his throat when Sunggyu's smile disarms him. It's almost like the smile when things were great, but not quite there.

Once Woohyun sits with his back resting against the headboard and plugs in the charger, Sunggyu speaks again. “Why don’t we order takeout and watch a couple of movies? There's an action film I've been meaning to watch for a while."

Woohyun nods, the butterflies on his stomach just like when things were great. "That'd be nice."

\--

“What if this is all a dream?” he mumbles to himself much later, after the sun has set and they’ve run through a mind-numbing action trilogy. The takeout boxes are still scattered between them, all of them empty. His mouth is starting to feel uncomfortable, like one time he had gingivitis. 

"You're starting to shift," Sunggyu comments as the credits go by. All that illuminates him is the faint glow of the TV, in shades of green and blue. "Your eyes look different."

"Hm," Says Woohyun. "How?"

"They are sharper, somehow. Like when the makeup artist used to trace your eyes with black kohl," Sunggyu replies, pulling Woohyun to lie down--not quite against him, but that's enough for Woohyun's heart to stutter. "Plus, they look funny when the light catches them. Have you ever seen the picture of a dog at night?"

"'m not a dog," Woohyun croaks.

“I’m not saying you are. It's just for reference." Sunggyu nudges him closer, but Woohyun curls into a ball. "Your eyebrows are also thicker, didn't you get them waxed?"

"How d' you... know?"

"The members keep me updated on what you're up to every now and them," Sunggyu answers, but quickly adds, "on their own. I don't ask them."

 _So you too_ , Woohyun thinks, but his musings are interrupted by the ache of his muscles, the tension on his spine. He groans.

"It looks like you’re finally growing. Try to relax," Sunggyu pats his head. Recognizing the touch, his body uncoils a little. "Ms. Oh told me it could hurt if you resist it."

"Leave."

Sunggyu shakes his head. "Not until you're done."

"What 'f... I eeeeat.... yuh... you?" Woohyun says, running his fingers through his teeth; much like his fangs, his nails have sharpened. "Y' ssssaid 't."

“You didn’t hurt me.” Sunggyu goes from patting his head to carding his fingers through his hair. Woohyun recognizes vaguely that he is getting hard under Sunggyu's touch. “Yesterday. So you won’t hurt me now. Plus, the full moon isn’t until tomorrow.”

Words start becoming abstract for Woohyun, but faintly, he realizes, his transformation is taking less time than yesterday and he’s losing, losing, losing concentration. At least it hurts less.

“Don’t stab yourself,” Sunggyu warns gently, prying his hand open and interlacing their fingers. His grip strengthens when Woohyun tries to withdraw his hand.

It’s dangerous, he thinks. But he cannot speak anymore.

“It’s okay, relax,” Sunggyu coaxes. “I’ll be here.”

That’s what worries Woohyun the most, but the unprecedented tenderness of Sunggyu’s touches, of his voice, has his throat and chest tied up in knots.

And like that, with the background sound of the TV and Sunggyu’s breathing, Woohyun unbecomes Woohyun.

(I miss you, you know? He thinks he hears Sunggyu say. He’s not sure. It's a memory anyway.)


	3. Baby I'm Howlin' For You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> About getting back together. Sort of.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from Howlin' For You by the black keys

The first thing that comes to him is the smell.

It’s Sunggyu, familiar Sunggyu. Woohyun sighs, content to find himself in Sunggyu’s room, in Sunggyu’s embrace, until he remembers the events of the day before, and remembers Sunggyu’s scorn and subsequent, tentative truce. Woohyun opens his eyes and finds himself curled into a ball in the corner of the bed, naked again, and with Sunggyu (who has clothes on, by the way) sprawled next to him. He sighs. 

The clothes, mere rags as the day before, are under him and tossed across the bed. He stands up carefully, trying to let Sunggyu rest, and turns off the TV that’s only showing a message saying ‘no input detected’ with white letters on a black background. Still wary on his feet, he opens the other man’s drawers and fishes for more of what he deemed ‘Sunggyu’s comfort clothes’. He doesn’t dare to steal underwear from the older man even though he knows they used to share in the past and some of his own boxers may even still be lost somewhere. To his surprise, he finds and old T-shirt that also used to belong to him.

After picking up the rags that were Sunggyu’s clothes and throwing them in the trash, he exits the room on the tip of his toes. He enters the bathroom and, after he’s done with his business, stares at himself in the mirror. At first, there is nothing out of the ordinary, but he realizes soon that even in the poor bathroom lights, everything looks cleaner; sharper somehow. Something similar happens with the smelling as well, although Woohyun wishes he hadn’t realized that in a bathroom, of all places. 

He starts shaving, knowing Sunggyu won’t mind too much that he’s using his razor unless he definitely can’t stand Woohyun’s presence at all, which… After last night, doesn’t seem very likely. Then again, the way that he lashed out at Woohyun the first night is also something to take into consideration. Sunggyu has always been pretty strong-minded. Once he makes up his mind about something, there’s nothing to convince him otherwise, and although Woohyun was aware, found it lovable even, that stubbornness, it was one of the worst parts when they were not Great.

As he applies shaving cream on his cheeks and over his lips, he wavers between daring to hope and being rejected, but his thoughts of Sunggyu’s light touches are interrupted when he starts shaving and accidentally cuts himself on the cheek just as he’s almost done.

He rinses off, and by the time he looks back to himself, the cut is gone. Useful, he thinks to himself, and then goes to the kitchen, stomach rumbling. 

Sunggyu’s fridge is almost empty, as usual, but Woohyun scavenges enough ingredients for a couple of pancakes, so he sets out to his task.

Sunggyu stumbles into the kitchen soon after, as Woohyun nearly finishes up. Sleep is still written all over his face, and Woohyun knows he’s non-verbal for the time being, so he sets a plate in front of him and then one for himself.

“I hope you don’t mind,” he says. Sunggyu grunts in response.

They eat for a while in comfortable silence, with Woohyun stealing furtive glances and Sunggyu chewing with his mouth open, staring into the abyss.

“Did I give you too much trouble last night?”

Sunggyu blinks, eyes focusing on him. “What?”

“When I…” Woohyun gestures to himself. To further emphasize his point, he growls and arches his fingers. It comes surprisingly natural.

“Ah,” Sunggyu stops chewing. His plate is almost empty. “You don’t remember? That’s interesting.”

Woohyun starts feeling his cheeks heat up. “Did I do something embarrassing?”

Sunggyu shrugs, picking up his plate and leaving it on the sink. He turns to look back to Woohyun and rests against the counter, arms crossed over his chest. “Nothing much. You rubbed yourself all over me, like smelling me? And then fell asleep.”

Woohyun looks at his plate, half-finished and has trouble passing down the food on his mouth. “You’re bullshitting me.”

“I thought you would say that, but look,” Sunggyu fishes out his phone, taps around for some time, and then shows him a frozen frame. “I have physical evidence.”

On the screen, the sight that greets him is a short video taken with the front camera of Sunggyu lying down and Woohyun on top of him. Except Woohyun looks different, his face hairier, his eyebrows more protuberant and his nose thicker, flatter. He hears Sunggyu say ‘hey, stop it’ but his voice is playful and he doesn’t make any real attempt to push him off.

When the weird, otherworldly Woohyun turns to look at the camera, the Woohyun from the present remembers what Sunggyu mentioned about dogs and cameras. His eyes shine an other-worldly green

All in all, it’s very puzzling.

“I wasn’t myself,” Woohyun says, half apologetic and half defensive, as if he was both offering an explanation and demanding one from Sunggyu.

Sunggyu takes his phone from Woohyun’s hand. “I know. That’s why I pushed you away for real after the video.”

“And then what happened?” Woohyun asks, but what he wants to know is, “did I hurt you?”

“What? No,” Sunggyu laughs softly. “You took the rejection surprisingly well, and then fell asleep. Every once in a while you growled in your sleep and wiggled around.”

He sees the reserved smile blooming on Sunggyu’s face as the older man stares at the screen, replaying the video, and Woohyun thinks this would have been easier two, three years ago, when they were Great.

Woohyun throws the leftovers on the trashcan and gives his plate to Sunggyu, who offers to wash the dishes as repayment. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Woohyun remembers that often used to be the unspoken arrangement. 

They stay quiet again as Sunggyu rinses off the plates and moves on to the pan and other various dishes piled up until Woohyun clears his throat. 

“Sunggyu,” he says. No honorifics, no pet names. “Why did we break up?”

Hands full of soap, Sunggyu lets the pan slip and hit the sink. He tries to play it cool, scrambling for it, and lets out a nervous laughter.

“Wasn’t it because of my trip to Bora Bora with my friends?” he glances at Woohyun, still pretending to be unaffected. “You got jealous, I got defensive, and we both said things we shouldn’t have.”

Which is, in all honesty, an oversimplification, but Woohyun doesn’t want to argue over details.

“I don’t think I ever told you how much I regretted what I said that night,” he tells Sunggyu instead. “It was a combination of everything. I was a ticking time bomb.”

“Yeah, the conversation got very nasty on my side too,” he finishes up with the pan and moves on to some miscellaneous food containers and pots that were already making the sink their permanent home, scrubbing with all his might. “I felt like you were clinging too much.”

“And I felt like you took care of me a lot, but I couldn’t reciprocate,” Woohyun muses aloud. “Maybe it was all miscommunication on both sides.”

“Then, it all evolved into a screaming fight about our career, the future, and general societal view of us,” Sunggyu cringes, laughing softly. “I still argue with my imaginary version of you while I’m on the shower.”

“You too?” Woohyun exclaims. 

“At least we didn’t get into a fist fight,” Sunggyu chuckles. “Remember when we were younger?”

“No, don’t remind me or we’ll argue over who won that one,” Woohyun replies, waving his fingers at Sunggyu. “It’s funny; when we broke up, I feel like we couldn’t even hear each other over our own yelling.”

“Eung,” Sunggyu grunts, rinsing off the last of his food containers. “Too bad it’s a little late for that.”

Woohyun feels it then, the goosebumps on the back of his neck, as he stands next to Sunggyu, bodies pressed together. Shoulder-to-shoulder. “Is it?”

Sunggyu turns his head towards him, tilts his body just a little towards him, and mutters, “Woohyun, don’t start things you can’t finish.”

A shiver runs through his spine.

“I’m just saying… I used to care too much about what people thought,” he says, inching closer. “Now that I’m not sure if I even count as people, some issues feel smaller than others.”

“You’re still people,” Sunggyu nudges him with his elbow, searching around for a towel to dry his hands, “you’re just on your werewolf period.”

But Woohyun doesn’t let the joke land because he’s pulling Sunggyu against him, and kissing him--a quiet kiss with no tongues or sharp teeth involved, just a press of lips against lips, a shudder and a breath. He pulls away, halfway to a heartbreak for the second time with the same man already, but Sunggyu follows with his mouth, body turning towards him. He doesn’t wrap his wet hands around Woohyun’s neck at first, simply resting them over his shoulders, until Woohyun coaxes his mouth open, lips still gliding against lips, and Sunggyu adventures himself to press his tongue carefully against Woohyun’s sharp teeth. Then, he lets his hands run through Woohyun’s hair, pressed to him chest-to-chest, and lets out a whine like an afterthought. 

Woohyun groans, feeling his body warm up in record time, and pulls Sunggyu closer to him, hands sliding from his waist to his butt, squeezing lightly. It’s been so long, he thinks, but their bodies still find the way to fit together. Only that his body is, after all, different now, and an idea comes to him.

“Hold onto me,” he mumbles, but before Sunggyu has the chance to ask why, Woohyun lifts him off his feet with ease. Sunggyu lets out a surprised yell, scrambling for purchase as Woohyun gauges the weight. It’s almost nothing. Interesting.

“You make a convincing point, so put me down!” he yells, and Woohyun swings around the kitchen, looking for a place to drop him. He finally settles on the counter where they were eating breakfast, the one that is at chest-level. He deposits Sunggyu there, settling between his legs. “Not what I had in mind.”

“Do you want me to help you down?” he asks, fingers playing with the edge of Sunggyu’s basketball shorts and tickling his knee.

Sunggyu pretends to think it over, looking at a faraway place. “Depends on what you have in mind.”

“I have a couple of things in mind, I have had them for a while, in fact,” Woohyun replies honestly, thinking of the reaction Sunggyu’s scent had in his body the first night. “Among them, that we could talk about many things later.”

“Later?” Sunggyu echoes, but Woohyun is already leaving feathery kisses on the tip of his toes, running his nails lightly against his calves. “O-okay. Later sounds good.”

“Yes?” Woohyun asks again, his kisses crawling up to Sunggyu’s knee. “And before that?”

“I’m thinking…” Sunggyu starts, but he very obviously lets such thoughts drop as Woohyun leaves wet kisses over his clothed thigh, climbing up and up, until he’s rubbing his nose against Sunggyu’s erection.

“You’re thinking? What a shame,” Woohyun mumbles, inhaling the scent that he can only describe as mouth-watering. Smells like want and need and surprise. Very faintly, it also smells like fear.

He hears Sunggyu’s hiss.

“No I’m not,” the older man says, searching between the folds of his shorts and pulling out his cock. He presses the pink, swollen tip against Woohyun’s lips with one hand and keeps the other steady on Woohyun’s hair. “I’m not thinking at all,” he exhales as Woohyun grips his thighs and opens his mouth. “Mind the teeth.”

Woohyun nods, intoxicated on the smell, swallowing Sunggyu’s cock. He lets Sunggyu set the pace as they both get used to the feeling of Woohyun’s teeth dragging softly across the length. In and out, in and out. Woohyun hears the man above him whine, hands dropping, hears the thundering of his chest, too. He starts going a little faster, a little deeper, and feels Sunggyu melt around him, then tense. The whines turn into moans, and Sunggyu is all but slumping back on the counter, undecided between fully letting go and tensing his thighs, wanting--Woohyun knows--to drag this as much as he can.

“The teeth, Woohyun,” he warbles. “The teeth.”

But it’s not much; soon, Sunggyu places both hands on Woohyun’s head and starts tugging at his hair, setting a quick, unforgiving pace. Woohyun lets him, faintly aware of how hard he in hidden under his sweatpants--Sunggyu’s sweatpants, that smell like early-morning exercise and lazing around in bed under all the detergent. He nearly comes untouched, so instead, he grips Sunggyu’s thighs harder.

“Ah!” Sunggyu exclaims, coming with a shudder, his cock slipping from Woohyun’s mouth and staining him on the cheek. “Ouch.”

In a daze, Woohyun wonders what Sunggyu means until the faint smell of blood comes through his nose. To the surprise of perhaps no one, his erection stays firm, if ever so slightly harder.

He looks down waiting for the worst, but realizes the smell is coming from a small tear of skin from a scratch.

Sunggyu sighs, putting his half-hard cock inside his pants, and rubs absently at the small incision that luckily doesn’t bleed for long. 

“That’s going to be a problem,” he says. His thumb rubs against Woohyun’s cheek--the one that’s smeared with cum--and dips into his mouth, rubbing the sharp teeth. “Lucky for you, I have an idea.”

\--

Woohyun clears his throat as Sunggyu locks the handcuffs around him, hands on his back. 

“You never mentioned this,” he comments, sinking into the couch, his back and hands pressed against the backrest. His shirt was discarded long ago. If he’s lucky, his pants might follow soon after.

“It was a gift from some friend, a couple months back,” Sunggyu says, crouching in front of him. “I don’t think we were together by then.”

“Would you have brought it up, if we were?”

“A lot of things could have happened, if we were. But what’s the point of thinking about that?” Sunggyu rests a hand on his shoulder, the other one travels down Woohyun’s chest. Hair has started growing there by now. “Are they too tight?”

“They’re tight enough,” Woohyun says, trying not to lose himself in the warmth of Sunggyu’s hand against his bare skin. “We have a lot to talk about.”

“Now is not the moment. I don’t want to think,” Sunggyu mumbles, not looking at him in the eyes, shifting his position so he’s half-straddling Woohyun, a knee resting on the couch next to Woohyun’s leg, balancing himself precariously.

“I want to keep thinking.” Woohyun squirms around, searching Sunggyu’s gaze. ”Otherwise, I don’t know what might happen.”

Sunggyu hums in response, tracing around Woohyun’s nipples with a light touch. Woohyun tries to center himself.

“And what are you thinking about right now?” Sunggyu’s pretty, manicured fingers trail down his stomach, tickles him lightly, and continues farther down.

Woohyun thinks of how well his body reacts to Sunggyu’s hands, how familiar it all is. He thinks of how pretty Sunggyu’s eyelashes are from up close, how soft his lips look, how good his fingers feel pressing on his cock--clothes and all. He thinks of how much he missed the contained affection expressed by Sunggyu’s tender touches.

He thinks of a lot of things, but all he can say is, “you.”

Sunggyu straddles him fully, then, kissing him on the lips as he does. He discarded his pants and underwear long ago, but he’s still wearing his shirt, so the contact isn’t skin-to-skin as Woohyun would like.

Woohyun whines into the kiss.

Sunggyu leans back, rubbing himself on Woohyun. A soft gasp escapes him when Woohyun presses against him. Sunggyu has always been a bit on the more vocal side, with little whines and hisses that never failed to drive Woohyun mad. This moment is not the exception.

“Sunggyu,” he mumbles, he begs, and the other man nods and presses his lips to Woohyun’s again as he pulls out his cock from his pants.

Once he starts rubbing their cocks together with a soft, maddening rhythm, Woohyun’s arms twitch, longing to wrap themselves around Sunggyu’s waist, but they’re held back by the clinking on the handcuff. He huffs, squirming.

“Easy,” Sunggyu coaxes, his voice a little out-of-breath. “You’re being impatient.”

Despite himself, Woohyun lets out a growl.

“Hey,” Sunggyu warns, loosening his hold on Woohyun’s cock and stilling his hips.

Woohyun gulps, feeling the tremors in his body. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. It’s just--” 

Sunggyu climbs off from him and Woohyun, desperately and with his body almost aching, tries to follow. But he remains still under Sunggyu’s wordless command when the older man digs a finger on his chest.

“I know,” he says, kneeling between Woohyun’s legs. “Lift your hips,” he commands, tugging at the waistband of Woohyun’s--his--pants to take them off. 

The second time that Woohyun struggles against his restraints comes when Sunggyu takes his cock in his hands and wraps his mouth around it. He tugs at the handcuffs harder, this time, wishing he could fuck Sunggyu’s mouth the way the older man did earlier that morning. But Sunggyu ignores him, focusing all his attention on sucking, licking. Woohyun shudders at the wetness surrounding him, and when he takes a deep breath to steady himself, the smell of his own scent rubbing into Sunggyu, overpowering everything in the apartment. 

Sunggyu shifts, and Woohyun smells him too--dripping into the floor, watery and strong. He nudges Sunggyu with his knee.

“That’s enough, please,” he mumbles. Sunggyu lets go of him, resting his cheek on Woohyun’s thigh. “How are--are we? I mean,”

“Think before you speak,” Sunggyu says, rubbing his thumb along the base.

“How are you so composed?”

“I’m not, can’t you feel it?” Sunggyu presses himself to Woohyun’s calf. “You’re just unhinged right now. How long has it been?”

“I don’t know,” Woohyun responds. “Do you want to talk about it? I’ve been careful.”

Sunggyu runs his hands through Woohyun’s thighs, his palms hot. He dips his tongue to play with the tip of Woohyun’s cock. “Me too.”

“Then are you going to fuck me?” he asks, nearly whines.

Sunggyu lets go with a pop, a string of fluids connecting his mouth and Woohyun’s cock. “I thought it would be more fun the other way around, what with the werewolf strength and all.”

“You handcuffed me.”

“And that’s the fun part,” Sunggyu says, standing up. Woohyun watches him leave and wonders if he should follow, but doesn’t think his legs would respond properly. He uses the moment to steady himself, then, trying to slow his breathing and the hammering of his heart. 

“Oh, your eyes have changed,” Sunggyu comments when he’s back, condom and lube in hand. He opens the cap and pours a generous amount into his fingers, and sits back to straddle Woohyun’s legs again.

“Do you think that’s a bad sign?” Woohyun mutters distractedly, more focused on the narrowing of Sunggyu’s eyebrows as Sunggyu opens himself up, on his ragged breath and his erratic heartbeat. Which, for some reason, thrills him and makes his mouth water.

Sunggyu doesn’t respond, too lost on himself, until he pulls away and with a satisfied sigh, tears open the packet containing the condom and rolls it on Woohyun. After slathering another good amount of lube around Woohyun’s cock, he grips the base and guides it towards him.

Woohyun shudders, spreading his legs to help Sunggyu balance himself and sinking into the couch to give him more space, and wishes they had done this on the bedroom. But it’s too late to relocate, and with Sunggyu’s warning moans, his impossible tightness, Woohyun allows himself to close his eyes and lose himself into the feeling. 

Once he’s gotten used to the stretch, Sunggyu starts moving his hips slowly, guiding Woohyun into him again and again, his hands resting on Woohyun’s knees. Woohyun hates the position, hates the speed. And yet he wants nothing more than to keep going inside Sunggyu, breaching into him. He moans, biting his lower lip, as Sunggyu lowers himself down, letting out a trail of curses and gasps and digging his nails into Woohyun’s shoulder as he does. Again, Woohyun would have preferred they used the bed, but now is too late for that, and as Sunggyu starts rolling his hips, Woohyun doesn’t really care about their location.

All he can concentrate on is the tightness, and the way Sunggyu molds himself to fit him. The position soon turns to be a challenge, however, and he knows the other man won’t hold on with the way his knees are bent, body folded to fit in the couch.

“Hyung,” he says, frustrated at his restraints. He wants to ask, but the words don’t come to him.

Sunggyu huffs, supporting himself on Woohyun’s shoulders to pull out and change positions. He turns around, half-sitting on Woohyun’s lap and half-standing, and guides Woohyun’s cock into him again. The slide is easier, then, and Sunggyu starts moving in and out, in and out with a string of broken moans. But it’s still not enough, and Woohyun is not sure he can ask.

So he pulls at the cuffs, with purpose this time, and they break easily.

Before Sunggyu has the chance to react, Woohyun wraps one arm around him and shoves all interfering objects off the coffee table in front of them. The remaining bottles of liquor (which they still hadn’t bothered to pick up) shatter in a chorus of high-pitched noises. He guides Sunggyu to lie with his stomach on the table, a perfect knee-height, and as the older man complains at the lack of case for his expensive alcohol, Woohyun pushes into him without much resistance and sets a quick pace.

He doesn’t let his hands linger too much on Sunggyu’s body for fear the nails will break the other man’s skin again. Instead, he grabs on to the cotton shirt--hears the sound of fabric tearing--and uses it to pull Sunggyu’s body as he fucks into him.

Sunggyu pushes back, his whining louder, and although Woohyun can detect the dull, unpleasant smell that he recognizes as fear, he realizes the excitement that overpowers it is much more intoxicating. 

“You knew,” he gasps against Sunggyu’s ear, grabbing the edge of the table to steady himself. “You knew they were going to break.”

“They are sex-shop handcuffs, Woohyun,” Sunggyu stutters, cheeks flushed, eyes teary. “What did you expect?”

Which, fair.

Woohyun groans--growls? --and rests all his weight on top of Sunggyu. He drags his teeth along the skin between Sunggyu’s shoulder and neck, not biting, not tearing skin. He stills. Sunggyu shudders.

“So, trust is a scary thing,” Sunggyu says, high pitched in some parts. Woohyun watches pearls of sweat slide down his hairline. His eyelashes are still as pretty as ever, his eyes a clear brown. So willingly under his control.

“Well, I guess it goes both ways,” Woohyun kneels back up, still sheathed inside Sunggyu, unable to stop himself from thinking of their last fight, of what he and Sunggyu could’ve said to make it better. “I’m not going to hurt you.” He traces the curves around him, places his hands on Sunggyu’s hips. I wish you had told me that, he thinks, but doesn’t say.

He can feel the other man shivering slightly under him, ready for Woohyun to start moving again, but he won’t comply until Sunggyu says so.

“I know.” Woohyun wonders if Sunggyu is going through the same memories as he is. “Somehow, I’m convinced that I know.”

“Do you?” Finally, thinking that he might accidentally dig his fingers into Sunggyu’s skin if he keeps his hands around the older man’s waist, Woohyun rests his hands on Sunggyu’s shoulder blades, pressing his palms, rather than his claw-looking fingers, against the skin under him. “Can I?”

“Yes,” Sunggyu says--a little too quickly, a little choked up. One of Sunggyu’s hands, the one that’s not holding onto the table to steady himself, sneaks down between his legs. “Yes, please.”

Woohyun takes him quickly, then, no time to breathe, no time to switch positions. He rolls his hips until there’s no space between their bodies, pulls out half-way through, and pushes back in again with more strength. Sunggyu tenses again at some point, and Woohyun feels him clench around him, inhales on the scent coating his hand, and intrigued and overstimulated, gets the urge to lick him clean. 

He doesn’t get the chance, however, because soon he too chases his pleasure to the end, pushing into Sunggyu until his cock softens and he pulls the condom off with ease. He sits back, panting, and drags Sunggyu with him. It’s surprisingly easy to cradle Sunggyu into his arms as if he weighed nothing. “I told you I wouldn’t hurt you.”

“I don’t know about you, but my knees are pretty roughed up,” Sunggyu shoots back, rubbing the mentioned spot. “Plus, you owe me a new shirt and a lot of whiskey.”

Woohyun kisses him to shut him up.

\--

Hours later, after picking up all traces of broken glass and cleaning themselves up for a cozy afternoon, Sunggyu glues the seal to his bedroom door.

“What if I tear down the room?” Woohyun comments, crossing the threshold. Seems like the seal only works if the door is closed.

Sunggyu shrugs. “You already owe me millions. You’ll just have to pay it all back.” Woohyun pouts and Sunggyu, laughing to himself, grabs his hand and presses a kiss to the back. “Your face is already starting to change.”

“The sun hasn’t even set,” Woohyun whines, chasing Sunggyu’s lips for a proper kiss. “And tomorrow, we’ll talk?”

Sunggyu nods. “Sleep well, Hyun. I’ll be here in the morning.” He lets go of Woohyun’s hand and grabs onto the doorknob. “Put Animal Planet on TV or something.”

\--

The morning after, as Woohyun emerges from the room feeling like no traces of magic are left on his body, with the promise of healing, they talk. It goes well.

(At least, until the next full moon.)

##    
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tbh I've thought about a sequel but I can't promise anything about it coming soon. still, thank you for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from 'Werewolf Gimmick' by the Mountain Goats, which I get is about wrestling and not about werewolves. I don't care.


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